Reading Time: 3 minutes “On the seventh day of Christmas MND research gives to you… our SEVEN research strategy themes” It’s New Year’s eve, a time to look back and celebrate on 2014 and our MND research achievements. It’s also a time to look to the future; in 2015 we will be funding new MND research in line with…
Reading Time: < 1 minute “On the third day of Christmas MND research gives to you… THREE days of the 25th International symposium on ALS/MND” From 5 – 7 December 2014 the Association held its annual research conference, the 25th International Symposium on ALS/MND. This year, the event was held in Brussels, where just shy of 900 researchers attended to…
Reading Time: 3 minutes A few days before Christmas, I hope that you’ll forgive the obvious pun. Rather than the small green vegetable that you either love or hate, here I’m talking sprouts of new shoots of talent shown by the winners of the poster prizes. They were chosen from over 300 poster presentations at the International Symposium on…
Reading Time: 5 minutes During the 25th International Symposium on ALS/MND there were two dedicated sessions for researchers to view over 300 posters. These posters varied from brain imaging to therapeutic strategies. But what is a poster? In this blog I’ll explain more about the session, as well as highlight some of my personal favourites. A biomedical or clinical…
Reading Time: 2 minutes I think Brian Dickie must have planned the early morning slot of the International Symposium in Brussels as a talk that would make delegates sit up and take note. Southampton based Professor Hugh Perry’s presentation certainly made me do that on Sunday morning, the last day of the meeting. His presentation was on the role…
Reading Time: 4 minutes With all the talk of new gene discoveries in recent years, the Sunday morning scientific session returned to the original discovery in 1993 that mutations in the SOD1 gene were responsible for around a fifth of familial (inherited) MND cases and 2-3% of all cases of the disease. Although much of our understanding of MND…
Reading Time: 3 minutes Association-funded researcher, Prof Julie Snowden from the University of Manchester was invited to present her research on MND and frontotemporal dementia at this year’s 25th International Symposium on ALS/MND. She is asking whether people living with MND and frontotemporal dementia develop a different form of dementia that is different to those with frontotemporal dementia alone.…
Reading Time: 3 minutes As well as biomedical research, we fund healthcare research to lead to better symptom management and support for people living with MND. On the final day of the symposium, Dr Stavroulakis from the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN), presented results on his Association-funded research. In some people living with MND, the muscles involved in…
Reading Time: 4 minutes Head injury has been a hot topic in the media in relation to MND. I also receive a number of enquiries from people living with MND asking about the causes of MND, and whether past head injury may influence this? This very topic was discussed in the epidemiology session on the second day of the…
Reading Time: 3 minutes During the second day of the symposium Association-funded researcher, Dr Chris McDermott, presented his highly anticipated research on a new neck support for people living with MND. Our healthcare research aims to lead to better symptom management and support for people living with MND. We know that neck weakness is an extremely distressing problem in…
